There was a moment on January 6, 1990, in Providence, Rhode Island, when David Posman apparently thought he had made the business deal of his life. That moment was after he took a bottle and smashed it over the head of an armored truck driver. Posman grabbed four bags from the truck and fled. Unfortunately for him, each bag weighed 30 pounds. He painfully staggered away, and the police soon found the exhausted thief hiding in a nearby parking garage. It was right about then that Posman discovered he had stolen 120 pounds of pennies.

There's a long history of low-IQ criminals botching their get-rich-quick schemes; one just has to read the newspaper or the book America's Dumbest Criminals, or watch Jay Leno ridicule them on The Tonight Show. One robbery suspect who was apprehended a few years ago protested: "There's no way he could identify me; I had my hat down over my eyes."

If only they knew. Becoming rich doesn't have to be so difficult. "It's almost like you don't have to be a Wall Street whiz, or have a huge salary, to become a millionaire anymore. You just have to teach yourself how to become one," observes Daryl T. Logullo of the Noble Financial Group in Boca Raton, Florida. Logullo is also the host of two daily financial radio shows heard across the nation, The First Word on Investing and The Final World on Investing.

He's right. In today's nearly Utopian economy, getting the money isn't the hard part anymore--it's figuring out what you should do with it after you've got it. 1-800-SOLD-OUT's CEO Justin Fallon, 31, observes, once you've made your millions, life isn't always the way you'd dreamed it would be: "Sometimes people treat you differently. My mom just got remarried, and [at the reception], people were coming up to my girlfriend and saying, `Can you believe how much money he's worth?' "

To this, Fallon retorts, "Who cares? People think it's a big deal. That's weird. I don't want people to think any differently of me." Then Fallon recites a quote he read on a tea box 10 years ago: "Judge a man not by what he gains from his toil, but from what he becomes in spite of it."

On paper, Fallon is worth millions in equity. He founded his company, which locates hard-to-find and sold-out tickets for events, in 1987--but it exploded in 1999 with the debut of his Web site. Fallon didn't want to offer exact figures, but let's just say his financial worth is somewhere between $40 million and $60 million. And, like many millionaire entrepreneurs, he's currently trying to figure out what he's becoming--in spite of it.

Geoff Williams, like many magazine writers, is not a millionaire. He had an interesting time writing this story, even though he cried into his pillow every night. "Is hundredaire a word?" he wonders.

The Millionare Blues

Everybody we interviewed for this story agrees with the obvious:
The problems of the rich are--pun intended--a million times better
than the problems of the poor. "It's like Cindy Crawford
complaining about beauty. It's really hard to complain about
having money," confides Jodi Shelton, 35, president of Shelton
Communications Group, a Dallas-based high-tech communications firm
that had sales of $3 million in 1999. Shelton herself has a
personal worth of $8 million from stock investments and various
other things. "It's been wonderful," Shelton says of
her wealth, "and it's enabled me to do things for my
family that I've never been able to."

But Shelton, who was raised in a middle-class family, notes:
"You're working very hard to bring in that money.
You're working a ton of hours, investing a lot of your time.
You're a prisoner of your money as well."

How so? "You're on a fast treadmill. A million dollars
sounds like a great deal of money, and, of course, it is.
But," Shelton observes wryly, "most everybody, including
millionaires, devises a lifestyle that matches the amount of money
they make. So you're [forcing yourself] to keep working really
hard."

She might have a point. On top of that, these days, a cool
million doesn't get you nearly as far as it did a couple
decades ago. Indeed, Fallon feels multimillionaire status is
really where it's at: "I don't think a million is the
bar anymore," he says.

The Requests Begin . . .

Not that we're ready to shed too many tears for the mere
millionaire, but the truth is, the more money an entrepreneur
brings in, the more people want a piece of it. "It can be
demanding," says Logullo. "We see a lot of cases of
successful CEOs who have $10 or $20 million net worth--they're
always being asked for something, whether it's personal
appearances at an event or charitable contributions."

And it's not just the corporate world that comes running
after millionaires; it's also friends and family. Darien Dash
is billed by his publicist as "the first African American
Internet-made millionaire." If so, he's also the first
African American Internet-made millionaire to be hit up for loans
by friends and family he probably never knew he had.

Dash, 28, owns Digital Mafia Entertainment, a company with
offices in New York City and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. And
while Dash's company sounds like something out of The
Firm, one of Digital Mafia Entertainment's missions is to
make money in an honorable way: by marketing to minority
communities, hoping to narrow the "digital divide"
between the poor and the affluent, the have-Nets and the have-nots.
So far, it's working. Dash oversees a staff of 35, and his
firm, which he started in 1994, made over $1 million last year.

Dash says he's invested wisely, and he's also half-owner
of Roc-a-Blok Records, a hip-hop label, which had a recent No. 1
Billboard R&B single with Sporty Thievz' "No
Pigeons." The result? A net worth of $14 million.

That news hasn't escaped those close to him. Even Dash, who
seems like a decent enough guy, mutters a startled "damn"
whenever a friend or family member asks for a sizable loan.
"Over the years, it's gone from somebody needing a hundred
dollars to a hundred thousand," gulps Dash.

Caren Sinclair knows the feeling well. "There's been a
change in my friends," says the 29-year-old entrepreneur, who
is worth $3 million and counting, thanks to a business she runs
with her mother Isabelle Tate. "They've always known that
I've had these goals in my mind," grumbles Caren,
"and now that it's actually happened, they've said
that I've changed."

And then there are her extended relatives. "Family--they
feel, `Okay, you have it, so we have it, too.' And in some
instances, that's true, but you don't get something for
nothing. And my family has just wanted to be given money. And
it's like, `Now wait a
minute . . . ' "

Caren Sinclair is doing the last thing you'd think you could
make millions doing: She gives swimming lessons to the rich. The
very rich. Like Saudi Arabian princes and princesses. And movie
stars. While Isabelle, 54, does the bookwork, Caren charges $2,000
for two weeks' worth of 30-minute one-on-one swimming lessons.
That alone would be good money for many entrepreneurs, but Sinclair
and Tate have made Pasadena, California-based Waterwaves Inc. into
a tsunami to be reckoned with.

They also employ lifeguards who work at military bases, hotels,
homeowners' associations and private pool parties. Soon, Caren
says, their swim company will be expanding into a pool-cleaning
service and a pool-safety education center. Also in the works: a
Waterwaves University to teach lifeguard training and, in the next
three years, a plan to open 38 new swim centers, where children can
receive one-on-one lessons from qualified instructors in six
states. "I love the Y," says Caren, "but I'm
going to take it to the next level."

It's Not All Bad

As entrepreneurs' bank accounts move to the next level, the
positives obviously outweigh the negatives. Caren, a subscriber to
Millionaire magazine (see "They're Everywhere"
on page 95), says the biggest purchase she's made so far has
been to take her mother on a long-desired vacation to Hawaii.

Dash, like Caren, hasn't been a millionaire for very
long--his biggest purchases, as of this writing, have been a BMW
540 for his wife and a Mercedes for himself. "I almost bought
a $17,000 home stereo system, until my wife stopped me," says
Dash, who adds that his wife "has been able to temper
me."

This seems to be a trend among younger entrepreneurs: Having
struck it rich so quickly, they're either too busy earning
their fortunes to spend them, or they're a little too nervous
to do so. "We know it can go as fast as it came," muses
Dash.

"My dad had a couple of companies that went bankrupt,"
says Fallon, echoing the same sentiment, "and my grandmother
lived through the Depression. I tend to look at money with a
squinty eye." That said, Fallon admits he travels fairly
frequently. "And I've started to get some of the toys--the
BMW convertible, a house in the country, an apartment in the city.
Life's pretty good."

Indeed. Shelton recently treated herself and four friends to an
Italian vacation. And three years ago, she gave her father a
Thunderbird ("zero miles; my dad had never had a new
car") for Christmas--a sort of payback for when Shelton's
father gave his one and only car to her so she could take it to
college. And Shelton pays to send her niece and nephew to private
school. "I want to make sure that my money is used for
bettering other people's lives, not just my own. I'm
interested in bettering my own, too, but if I can help the people I
love, it's so rewarding."

The True View

Others fear that money will warp their perspectives on
what's really important. Sinclair says one of her clients made
a big impression on her. While most of the movie stars and wealthy
CEOs she has worked for have had "three kids and five
nannies," there was one actress who stayed to watch her
son's swimming lessons, and then would take him to school.
"She didn't even have a nanny on the staff," marvels
Sinclair, who reveals that the actress was Valerie Bertinelli.
"I'm going to be like that, too," says the
often-working, still-single Sinclair.

Shelton just became a mother herself, and her millionaire status
gives her the freedom to be a stay-at-home mom. Since her
baby's birth, she's been running her company by
telecommuting, relying on her staff of 26 to see that the company
continues to thrive. "I think [being able to delegate] is the
mark of a good entrepreneur," Shelton says.

It's this freedom that Shelton says is the best gift you can
buy yourself when you become the next millionaire on the block.
"The one thing I have truly found since I've been able to
buy a lot of things is that [the finer things in life] do not bring
you happiness," she says. "What I like more about the
fact of having money is it buys you the freedom to travel and to
choose things. It's the same thing with having a child; I did
not have to make some of the decisions that other working mothers
have to make, and I feel so fortunate."

Fallon is still figuring out what the best thing about being a
millionaire is--but he understands the worst. "I know a lot of
people who, if they couldn't fly first-class and didn't
have money, they would be unhappy," he says. "And I guess
I don't ever want to be in a situation where I have to hold on
to money that tightly. I don't want to be afraid of losing
it."

And then, like people do in the movies but almost never in real
life, Fallon expresses his thoughtful philosophy by quoting a
stanza from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If":

" 'If you can make one heap of all your winnings

" 'And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

" 'And lose, and start again at your
beginnings

" 'And never breathe a word about your
loss . . . '

"That's kind of the thing, you know?" muses
Fallon. "I'm blessed to have this, but I want to live my
life so that if somehow the money is taken away or lost, it's
not really that big of a difference. I don't want money to
become very important to my happiness because I think that's
setting myself up for false expectations. Who knows? Anything can
happen."

They're Everywhere

It's not your imagination. Millionaires are hot--and they're multiplying. When they aren't the focus of newspaper and magazine articles, they are the magazine. Consider Millionaire, a thriving luxury and lifestyle magazine. Last year, it went from being published four times to 10 times a year. (It's $7.95 an issue, but if you're a millionaire, who cares?) Meanwhile, ABC's sporadic television series, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, is a bona fide hit. "I think the reason . . . Millionaire has struck such a chord is that it taps into that idea that you can become instantly rich," says ABC's Kevin Brockman. "It's the American dream."

These are no pipe dreams, though, in the pages of Millionaire magazine. According to Vanessa Berkling, editor-in-chief, while many readers are millionaire wannabes, she's received messages from callers thanking her for some of the ads they've run: "This is just the jet I was hoping to find," said one. Another was pleased to find an ad for a helicopter. "Buying a helicopter isn't one of my top priorities," admits Berkling, and as far as her non-millionaire status goes, she says, "I'm working on it."

And she just might do it, if her take on the new millionaire is correct. "I don't believe it takes money to make money," says Berkling. "I think if you want to make your dream a reality, you really need to take the world on, and don't let anything stand in your way. It's just the result of a lot of hard work."